I don’t have much of a stance on social equity. To be honest, I’m not even 100% what that means. Outside of TNation, I spend little time on the internet or social media, so I am only vaguely aware of the terms being used these days.
I don’t think being born “privileged” automatically leads to ruin. I think it’s fairly known that (many) family fortunes don’t last longer than 1-2 generations after the one who built them, so I don’t think “getting rich” should be one’s #1 goal for themselves and their family.
In my own experience, like I said, I’ve known of a few guys who got very (like, very) wealthy. Their kids did all the right stuff - stayed out of trouble, went to good colleges, etc. Some, if not most, inherited businesses and had their jobs pretty much lined up for them by the time they became adults. Once you get to the grandkids, you see a lot of spoiled, lazy behavior. Those kids have never had to work for anything. They’ve never even seen their family members work for anything. It was all just there by the time they were born. That’s when you start seeing issues. They flunk out of college, they develop addiction issues and get into legal trouble, they pick bad people to date and procreate with, etc. I know this isn’t the case for all wealthy families, but I think it’s safe to say it’s the case for many.
Hence, why “getting rich” shouldn’t be (merely in my opinion!) the #1 goal. It doesn’t last forever, and the good it may provide for a limited time can quickly turn to bad.
But there’s a middle ground between being poor and being rich. Striving to become a homeowner? Good! Great, actually. I’m disappointed that this is becoming more out of reach for people. Have a passion and want to start a business? Also great! I’m not saying people should stay stuck in poverty, but that maybe it’s not the best use one’s time to try to become a multi-millionaire, as if that will finally provide everything their family needs and end all sources of worries.
I don’t try to square my views with distribution of privilege. Generally, I don’t think taking anything from someone and giving it someone else who didn’t necessarily earn it solves anything long term. As far as largescale attempts of this, I think there are some genuine cases that could be examined where the U.S. broke legal promises with Natives regarding ownership of and access to land, but I don’t support the idea of reparations for descendants of slaves or anything like that, if that’s what you’re referring to.
I’ll quote the oft-repeated, “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” That is generally what I believe, but the point of civilizations is to move from hard times to good times, so I don’t expect this cycle to ever really end. Things are getting uncomfortably easy though.
Depends on what you mean by “poor.” Like I said above, I don’t think people should intentionally stay truly poor. (Is anyone in America truly poor?)
For the most part, the best thing for marginalized groups would probably be to let them run things how they want. In the 1930s, Native tribes had a foreign form of government thrust upon them by John Collier and the BIA that has done nothing but cause issues to this day, and in cases where tribes have used their own forms of government, certain things have gone better. I could write pages about this, but many of the problems seen today in various communities are, in my opinion, due to the government stepping in and not letting groups govern themselves. If this was easier for people to do, marginalized groups wouldn’t be so marginalized.
